Gloriana

Fan Dragon

This dragon, at level 25, fully stoned, with her accent was a welcome gift from my ke'chara, Telurin, who thought it appropriate since I picked the names. As an empath who loves elves, I always wished I could've gotten my hands on more comics featuring this character as a kid.

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(CW: Emotional abuse by parents with some coded transphobia. Please take care of yourselves. Full details about the CW and inspiring lore source in this post.)

My version of this character is transfemme. Her story does not start in Sornieth.

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They referred to her as The Creature. Unwanted from the very moment she hatched, she became a twisted thing, warped by their cruelty and hatred. As soon as she was strong enough to care for herself, she flew as far and fast away as she could.

Still, she lived down to their expectations of her, as if their opinions had embedded into her very marrow. Still too young to be out on her own, too inexperienced, she’d crawled into a burrow out of the rain one day for some much-needed sleep.

She woke up in a bone cage surrounded by goblins. Vicious fey with snub noses, green hides, and maws full of sharp teeth. Just beyond the imposing figure in front of her cage, she saw a pot big enough for her and some vegetables besides. Goblins were well known for their appetites and ability to eat anything and everything.

Rather than fear, knowing she stood no chance against the goblin horde around her, she was filled with spite and hatred and a hunger to rival theirs. This would not be how her life ended.

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Rough outline for the rest: Fueled by the hateful hunger of the goblin horde around her, Gloriana transforms, defeats their king and becomes goblin queen. She lives up to the title for awhile until the goblins capture Braddock, who is compassionate and introduces her empathic senses to the sort of emotional state she’d been craving all along. They are like a balm on her soul. She keeps him around for that reason, amazed when he begins showing her direct compassion as they slowly get to know one another.

She transforms for him, becoming a beautiful skydancer in an attempt to woo him, but she’s still too full of hate and spite, too overly influenced by the goblin horde when they aren’t alone together. Also he’s still technically a captive. He rejects her.

She eventually releases him and even helps him find his way back through the veil to his Sornieth.

In the wake of his absence though, she has trouble keeping hold of those more beautiful emotions he’d introduced her to. She can’t block out the goblin horde and she realizes it was those emotions she loved feeling for once in her life, more than Braddock himself that she misses as they are slowly smothered under her goblin horde. She begins introducing certain ways by decree, slowly changing the goblin horde, shaping them and herself into something better. Many goblins leave over the next few years, but those who remain only make it easier for all of them to grow, and eventually some who left begin returning, pulled back in by their families who remained and the prosperity all their hard work has begun to usher in.

Eventually, however, she knows it’s time for her to move on. Her goblins have come a long way, but they are still vicious, pragmatic creatures operating on the mutual horde-wide benefits of their new ways, rather than any emotional payoff. They cannot afford compassion.

She helps them appoint a council and select a chieftain and goes out into the world far more confident than she’s ever been before. Aware she can transform by this point, she elects to look like one of the fair elves, long blonde hair and pointed ears. After all, a goblin out on her own is eventually a dead goblin. No one would stop to question whether she was the famed goblin queen whose death would likely incite a full-force resurgence of the goblin threat.

Over time traveling like this, she’s able to truly find herself, learn more about her empathic gifts and how they work, and eventually shield to better become the person she truly wants to be. Occasionally she checks in on her goblin horde, able to maintain her sense of self in their presence and queen only in honorary title. They’re doing well for a bunch of intelligent land-piranhas.

Fate wasn’t finished setting Braddock in her path, however. The skydancer eventually returned on a quest and along the way, found all that Gloriana had done and achieved in his absence. I have no idea what his quest is at this point (maybe something to do with curing Shade taint), but Gloriana will help him with it and now that they both are more fully realized individuals will develop a romance. Gloriana will return with him to Sornieth through a mushroom ring in plague territory lol, able to go back and forth between his realm and hers as needed.

In Sornieth, she eventually takes on the shape of a nocturne, though she starts out with everyone assuming she’s some kind of dryad. After that first rejection, the idea of being a skydancer soured on her, it was too much of a reminder. Mirror dragons, while reminding her of her goblin family, reminded her a bit too much of her goblin past. Ultimately, she chose nocturne because she came to realize they were an awful lot like her, adopting aspects of the dragons around them from behavior to personality, wanting more than anything to be accepted and fit in (actual canon nocturne behavior). She felt an instant kinship.

Also, I'm thinking Braddock might be transmasc and was still an egg (trans metaphor version, not literal) when he met Gloriana.

Paternal gen1 ancestor: Shade #3592
Maternal gen1 ancestor: Mukuro #39632


All images link to their sources.